Dark Matter

Light fare this week. My brain still hurts from all the healthcare hysteria from last week.

In the wake of violence and threats to members of Congress following the passage of the healthcare reform bill, some members of the “Tea Party Movement” have expressed irritation with the way they are being portrayed in the “mainstream” (read non-ideologically conservative) media. Their complaint is that the most extreme, racist, violent element of their movement is being used by the press to paint the entire group with the same broad brush. The “movement,” they say, has been, and is being unfairly portrayed as little more than a frantic, baseless, insensitive, racist, paranoid protest by America’s lunatic fringe. Given the actions demonstrated and the rhetoric extolled on behalf of “the movement” since its inception last year, one could argue as to how unfair that description actually is, but the essence of their complaint does contain an element of truth. During the healthcare debate in particular, there have been no shortage of media images of delirious tea baggers and their supporters disrupting town hall meetings, misspelling threats on cardboard signs, forwarding racist e-mails to donors, spitting on congressmen and mocking disabled homeless people. And the media has made no serious attempt to point out the obvious truth that membership in a group does not necessarily mean that the words and actions of one member are condoned by all the others. But that isn’t really the function of the media, is it?

What the Right has yet to understand is a lesson effective protest movements on the Left learned almost fifty years ago. Unfortunately, the media cannot be relied upon to present an accurate, balanced portrait of anything, let alone a protest movement. That’s not their job. Their responsibility is to sell advertising. More eyeballs glued to the screen translates directly into more advertising dollars in the networks’ pockets, which translates into happy network executives, journalism be dammed. And nothing glues eyeballs to the screen quite like representations of the President in whiteface and a group of privileged angry white men mocking a disabled veteran by throwing dollars at him so he can “pay his healthcare bills.”

The Civil Rights movement learned very early on that if you want to be viewed with any sort of legitimacy, you have to take complete control of your own image. Dr. King drilled into every single one of his marchers the importance of conducting one’s self like a civilized human being, regardless of the indignity being suffered. Anyone who engaged in violence during a march was certain not to be present at the next one. Why? Because King knew the newspapers were just itching to print headlines proclaiming white people’s worst fears, that Negroes couldn’t even walk down the street with starting a riot. So, he purged any unsavory element from his ranks, robbing his enemies of ammunition to use against him, and when they had nothing left but to resort to violence against his dignity, the country was forced to accept the fact that black people were in fact people, and deserving of respect like everyone else. The image the media got of his Civil Rights movement was the image he presented to them, not one they created of him. I am assuming that at some point the Right, particularly the tea baggers, will learn this lesson too. Although, if you purged the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, isolationist paranoid element from the “Tea Party Movement,” I’m not sure just how much of a “movement” would be left.

Italian sports car maker Ferrari announced recently that they will no longer produce a fully manual transmission for any of its vehicles. Sigh. First Porsche develops an SUV, then they (among others) market a “four door coupe,” and now this. As if the decline of the sports car wasn’t enough, now, the manual transmission, which has been dying a slow death since the early 80’s has received the first nail in the coffin. I have never purchased a car with an automatic transmission. I hoped never to have to do so. My hope may have been in vain. I have died a little inside.

The Large Hadron Collider is up and running again. Anybody have the Vegas odds on the earth being destroyed by a man-made black hole in the next ten days or so?

On his website early this week, Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin admitted that he has been “living la vida loca” – with men. In perhaps the most stunning sexual orientation revelation since Clay Aiken, admitted that he is indeed, gay. I’m shocked. I really am. Next you’ll want me to believe that Ellen DeGeneres is a lesbian. Come on.

Finally, in news that may interest only me, rumors are swirling that the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes of the National Hockey League (formerly the Winnipeg Jets) maybe, just maybe, might return to Winnipeg. As a native of Winnipeg I must admit, I haven’t been this excited about hockey since Team Canada won the gold medal at the Olympics. (I don’t mean to rub that in, really, I don’t.) I had already moved to Ontario by the time the Jets left for Arizona in 1996, but I remember being thoroughly depressed for weeks at the thought of the pride of my city being transplanted to a place where the only ice people had ever seen was floating in their martinis. At the time, the NHL was in full expansion mode, and was convinced that placing teams in large U.S. markets like Florida and California where people thought hockey was some sort of nifty French pastry would be more profitable for the league than keeping teams in smaller, Canadian markets where the game was a way of life. They were wrong. Perhaps now they’ll have a chance to reverse a terrible error in judgment and bring the Jets home.